Siti web come Slashdot, Digg o DiggReddit pubblicano principalmente brevi segnalazioni relative a notizie apparse su altri siti web, con un [[collegamento ipertestuale]] alla notizia vera e propria e la possibilità per i lettori di esprimere il proprio giudizio su di essa. In questo modo, un vasto numero di lettori visita contemporaneamente il sito linkato; generandole richieste inviate possono eccedere la banda disponibile del sito, o le capacità di risposta dei server; in tal caso il suddettosito diviene temporaneamente effettoirraggiungibile.
Un commento ad un articolo di Slashdot spiega l'effetto in modo umoristico: "Slashdot è famoso in tutto il mondo. Un attacco [[DDoS]] vagante di fronte al quale gli amministratori di reti e sistemi tremano e che causa loro terribili incubi."<ref>[http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150104&cid=12584521 Google's New Personalized Homepage]</ref>
The effect has been associated with other websites or [[metablog]]s such as [[Fark]], [[Drudge Report]] and [[Digg]], leading to terms such as being '''Farked''' or '''Drudged''' and the '''Digg effect'''. Typically, less robust sites are unable to cope with the huge increase in traffic and become unavailable – common causes are lack of sufficient [[data bandwidth]], [[Server (computing)|servers]] that fail to cope with the high number of requests, and traffic [[Disk quota|quota]]s. Sites that are maintained on [[shared hosting]] services often fail when confronted with the Slashdot effect.
Links from other popular websites can cause problems comparable to this effect – see [[web traffic#Traffic overload|traffic overload]].
==Cause==
Sites such as Slashdot, Digg, and Fark consist of brief submitted ''stories'' and a self-moderated discussion on each story. The typical submission introduces a news item or website of interest by [[hyperlink|linking]] to it. In response, large masses of readers tend to simultaneously rush to view the referenced sites. The ensuing flood of page requests from readers can exceed the site's available bandwidth or the ability of its servers to respond, and render the site temporarily unreachable.
One comment on a Slashdot story humorously summarized the effect: "Slashdot is world famous. A roving random [[denial of service attack#Distributed attack|distributed denial of service attack]] before which web, network and systems administrators alike quake and have terrible nightmares about."<ref>[http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150104&cid=12584521 Google's New Personalized Homepage]</ref>
